Leckerbissen’s front door flew open and banged against the wall, so hard that it made the shelves rattle. Chocolate buttons and chocolate-coated nuts tumbled from the tops of their bowls, bounced across the shelves and fell to the floor. A woman dressed in a long cream fur coat and a matching fur hat flounced into the shop. Finnegan slunk in after her, growling.
‘Finnegan!’ scolded Freja. ‘You’re not allowed in here.’ She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back outside.
Closing the shop door once more, Freja apologised. ‘Sorry, Fräulein. He’s just a puppy and gets confused sometimes. I think he got a fright when the door slammed so hard against the wall.’
The woman smoothed her black gloves, pushed her dark glasses further up her nose and pulled her fur coat more tightly around her body. The collar sat up around her cheeks and the hat reached down over her forehead and ears so that her face could barely be seen amongst all the fur. She looked like she’d been swallowed by a polar bear.
‘Ciao!’ sang Vivi. ‘I mean, guten Tag!’
Freja loved that Vivi used Italian by mistake when excited or surprised. This time, she was probably surprised. The woman looked rather startling covered from head to toe in cream fur. The fog had made the day unusually cool, but it was hardly Arctic. Freja giggled, then pressed her hand over her mouth.
The woman in the fur was not amused. She squeezed in between Herr Basil and the chocolate-laden table. She clapped her gloved hands together just centimetres from Vivi’s nose and announced in a thick German accent, ‘I would like everything you have that is made from Margrit Milk chocolate.’
Freja gasped. What was it with the Margrit Milk?
‘Margrit Milk?’ asked Vivi, her voice showing the same surprise that Freja was feeling. ‘But that is strangely popular today.’
‘And why not?’ the woman snapped. ‘Word is out that it is the best chocolate in Lucerne. Why else would a lunatic be running about breaking into chocolateries and stealing all the products made from Margrit Milk?’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Vivi. ‘Even I did not know that. The chocolate stolen last night from Café Schokolade-Schokolade was Margrit Milk, but I did not know that the chocolate stolen from Schokoladen-Fantasie was also the Margrit Milk.’
The woman’s gloved hands twitched, rubbed together for a moment, then stilled. ‘Everyone knows!’ she snapped. ‘Gossip gets around. Especially chocolate gossip.’
Freja nodded. It made sense. Chocolate was so terribly important to the Swiss.
Vivi smiled. ‘I’m afraid we have just a small amount of goodies made from Margrit Milk. Herr Basil, here, has just made a large purchase.’
Herr Basil waved from where he was now standing, gazing at the chocolate doll’s house. ‘The people in the doll’s house are all made from Margrit Milk!’ he cried. ‘The little family around the dining table and the Frau in the bath. I love the Margrit Milk and would recognise its smooth creamy colour and texture anywhere!’
‘It is true,’ said Vivi. ‘But, of course, the chocolate dolls are not for sale.’ She smiled apologetically.
The woman’s nostrils flared and the fur of her coat seemed to shiver all over. ‘Then I will have all of your remaining Margrit Milk goodies. Quickly please. Snap-snap!’ She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at Herr Basil.
Vivi placed seven chocolate pencils and two Lake Lucerne pebbles in a pink box. The woman threw some notes across the table and snatched the box before Vivi had time to tie the lid on with a ribbon.
‘I will be making more Margrit Milk treats this afternoon and tomorrow,’ said Vivi, but the woman was already on her way out the door. She glared through the window at Herr Basil and disappeared around the corner. Finnegan stood growling in the street, long after she had gone.
Herr Basil looked at his watch, gave a little start of surprise and cried, ‘But it is late! I must be off to my meeting. Auf Wiedersehen!’ Nodding his farewell, he ambled out the door, his briefcase swinging from his hand, the three chocolate boxes tucked snugly beneath his arm.
He doesn’t look at all like he is rushing to a meeting, thought Freja. And he was very good at identifying Margrit Milk chocolate in the doll’s house. Suspiciously good.
‘Oh,’ said Freja out loud, remembering that she herself had somewhere to go. ‘I would like a box of mixed chocolates, please, Vivi. A big box for Clementine.’
Vivi smiled and her eyes softened like chocolate melting in a saucepan. ‘A heart-shaped box, I think,’ said Vivi, ‘filled with the praline flowers and the peppermint leaves and the pretty little acorns with vanilla cream centres.’
Freja watched in silence as Vivi moved about the shelves, smiling, humming, filling the pretty pink box and tying it with a wide purple ribbon.
‘And perhaps,’ suggested Vivi, ‘you will want something for the lady who shares Clementine’s room?’
Freja nodded, grateful that Vivi seemed always to know what was best. ‘Yes, please. Something soft for Lady P. Something that can be eaten without her bruised jaw aching or her squashed nose throbbing.’
Vivi tapped her lips as she scanned the shelves. ‘Aha!’ she cried, her eyes lighting up. ‘Chocolate mousse cups! The soft fluffy filling can be licked out, then the thin, delicate cups broken into tiny pieces that will melt on the tongue with little effort but a great amount of pleasure.’
‘Perfect!’ cheered Freja.
‘And delicious!’ cried Vivi. She passed one of the chocolate mousse cups to Freja and popped another into her own mouth.
Leckerbissen’s door flew open once more and Herr Basil staggered back inside. His shirt was torn, his tie askew, his briefcase battered. His hands and knees were covered in dirt.
‘Hilf mir! Hilf mir!’ he groaned. ‘Help! Help!’
Freja and Vivi ran to his side and, taking one arm each, helped him to the nearest café chair. He flopped forward so that his forehead rested on the cool marble surface of the table. He moaned, ‘I have just been mugged!’
‘How terrible!’ cried Vivi.
‘Unbelievable!’ gasped Freja.
Vivi wrapped her arms around the banker’s wide shoulders and cooed, ‘But you are safe now — here amongst the chocolate and your friends.’
Freja crept around to the far side of the table. She grabbed the edge of the marble, narrowed her eyes and peered at Herr Basil. Long and hard. The banker’s heavy gold watch still encircled his wrist. His wallet remained tucked into his shirt pocket. And his briefcase, although battered and dirty, was still locked, its secret papers safe and sound inside.
Could Herr Basil be making the whole thing up? Was he just pretending he’d been mugged?
No, thought Freja. That doesn’t make sense.
But if he really had been mugged, what on earth had been stolen?
Freja pulled off her beanie and scratched her head.
She stared and wondered.
She wondered and stared.
And then she gasped.
For, suddenly, she realised what was missing.
The chocolates!
The chocolates had been stolen.
All three boxes.
All Margrit Milk.
‘Another chocolate theft!’ gasped Frau Niederhauser.
‘And this time, a violent one,’ said Vivi.
Frau Niederhauser, François-Louis, Daniel, Vivi and Freja sat around the table with Herr Basil. The banker seemed a little less shaky now that he had eaten a chocolate éclair and licked clean the bowl in which Daniel had been making a chocolate kirsch ganache.
‘Was it the lady in the fur coat?’ asked Freja, unable to keep her suspicions to herself a moment longer. ‘It was her, wasn’t it?’
‘What?’ gasped Herr Basil. ‘The lady? Nein! Nein! It was a ninja, a man dressed in black from head to toe. Even his face was covered in black with just two gaps for his eyes to see out.’
‘A ninja!’ gasped Daniel.
‘Like a villain from an action film,’ said François
-Louis.
‘Like an acrobat,’ added Freja.
‘Ja!’ Herr Basil nodded, his eyes wide at the memory. ‘I had just turned down a small alleyway between two buildings when he appeared from nowhere. Poof!’ He made a small exploding action with his hands. ‘Perhaps he came down from the rooftops. Perhaps he came up through a manhole in the street. Perhaps he just appeared by magic. But once he was there, he pushed me down, he beat me up, he jumped up and down on my briefcase, he seized my chocolates and he disappeared once more. Poof!’
‘Wicked!’ cried Daniel.
‘Ja! Ja!’ agreed François-Louis. ‘Böse!’
‘Ja! Ja!’ agreed Frau Niederhauser. ‘But at least the mugger did not jump up and down on the chocolates. That would have been unforgivable.’
CHAPTER 21
Hospital horrors
‘I say!’ cried Tobias, barging into Clementine and Lady P’s room. ‘I’d never really thought about it before, but a hospital would be the perfect setting for a crime novel.’
The nurse who was giving Clementine an injection snorted and glared over the top of her glasses. Freja blushed, pressed herself against the wall and hugged her satchel to her chest. Finnegan whimpered and squeezed his shaggy grey head between Freja and the wall. Tobias, however, continued, unperturbed.
‘Why, my dear Clem,’ he said, tossing his backpack aside and dancing across the room in his excitement, ‘just imagine what harm could be done with an injection alone. Medicines are wonderful when used in the right dose for the right ailment, but if used incorrectly . . . well . . . let’s just say they can be every bit as dangerous as a carefully selected toadstool.’ He chuckled, pulled his little book, European Mushrooms, from his cardigan pocket and waved it in the air. ‘And one can never be truly sure that the nurse is trustworthy. Or even sane, for that matter. Take this nurse here, for example. She looks lovely and efficient and honest, but then again, she might be a crazed lunatic who runs around injecting people with poison — or raspberry cordial — just for laughs!’
The nurse dropped the syringe in her dish and stomped out of the room, glaring at the girl and the dog as she passed. Freja’s knees felt like chocolate that had suddenly turned all soft and melty in the midday sun.
‘And then, of course,’ Tobias babbled on, ‘there are so many sharp instruments lying around — not just the syringes, but scissors and scalpels and needles and bone cutters. In the wrong pair of hands, they could be quite destructive. Extremely destructive!’ He grimaced, but then his face lit up as a new idea sprang to mind. ‘What if a mad surgeon decided to remove one’s tonsils instead of one’s appendix . . . or to amputate one’s ear instead of removing the wart from one’s little finger? Oh dear. There are just too, too many things that could go wrong.’
Taking his notebook and pencil out of his cardigan pocket, Tobias sat down on the edge of Lady P’s bed. He scribbled, murmured and chuckled, then tucked his pencil behind his ear.
‘Now, the situation of our dear friend, Lady P, is particularly interesting.’ Springing to his feet once more, Tobias waved his hand to indicate the entire length of Lady P’s body. ‘Why, this poor woman is so completely bound and tethered with plasters and bandages, pulleys and drips, that she might just as well be tied to a chair with a rope! Anyone could do anything to her and there is absolutely no way she could escape.’
Freja gasped, but Lady P’s eyes twinkled between her bandages. And Clementine was smiling, her teeth flashing, her eyes wrinkling at the corners.
Tobias walked along one side of Lady P’s bed, then the other, muttering merrily. ‘So many bandages and plasters. Wonderful! Wonderful! Head-to-toe mummification.’ He leaned over Lady P’s face and narrowed his eyes. ‘Why, for all we know, it might not even be Lady Pembleton inside.’
Lady P snorted.
Tobias turned to Clementine, frowning. ‘This could be rather serious, old girl. Instead of sharing your room with the real Lady Pembleton, you might be sharing it with an imposter — a shoemaker named Hans Blickensderfer or a clock-winder named Monika Moosbrugger . . . or even a criminal in hiding. You must admit, it would be a brilliant disguise!’ He pulled his pencil from behind his ear and scratched his head with the pointy end. ‘Goodness! The possibilities are endless.’
Clementine and Lady P both burst out laughing. They laughed until they could laugh no more — Clementine because she grew weary, Lady P because her plastered leg shook so violently from side to side that the bolt holding the pulley started to work its way out of the ceiling.
‘Brilliant! Brilliant!’ cried Tobias, pushing Clementine’s bed across the room until it was tight against Lady P’s. He tossed pillows, sheets and blankets in the middle until he’d created a delightful rat’s nest between the two patients. ‘You know what they say: Laughter is the best medicine.’
Freja climbed up into the nest and pulled the two heart-shaped boxes from her satchel. ‘And chocolate!’ she cried. ‘Laughter and chocolate are the best medicine.’
‘Boof!’ Finnegan leapt up onto the bed and dropped his stick across Clementine’s legs.
‘Yes,’ agreed Clementine. ‘Laughter and chocolate and sticks.’
Tobias blustered and fussed about. He propped Clementine up on a pile of pillows at the head of her bed. He tucked the stray ends of Lady P’s bandages back in place and rapped his knuckles on her plastered leg. He picked up Freja’s cherry-red beanie that had fallen from her head and pulled it down over Clementine’s bald head. Then he perched himself on the end of Clementine’s bed like a bird on a fence — a scruffy, gangly bird that had been caught up in a whirlwind, dragged through the treetops, then spat out once more, whole and happy but a little worse for wear. His cardigan sleeve was coming unravelled at the cuff, a pumpernickel sandwich from lunchtime poked out the top of his pocket, his hair was full of twigs from the morning’s forest outing and one of his boots was completely lace-free thanks to Finnegan’s unwavering appetite for socks and shoelaces.
Freja smiled and reminded herself to buy him some new laces the next time she was near the shops. Lots of new laces.
Clementine closed her eyes and nibbled on a leaf-shaped peppermint, a murmur of appreciation slipping out between her lips and the chocolate. Lady P smiled as the last shard of thin chocolate from her chocolate mousse cup melted on her tongue, then cried, ‘Delicious! A wonderful change from broth and gruel and other watery substances that are meant to make me hale and hearty yet do nothing but make me want to scream.’
Finnegan commando-crawled across the bed until his front paws were on the edge of Lady P’s pillow. Slowly, gently, he leaned forward and licked a crumb of chocolate from the corner of her mouth.
‘Why, thank you, my friend,’ said Lady P, scratching Finnegan behind the ear in just the right spot.
Clementine giggled, her cheeks turning a rosy red.
Freja beamed. She could see the chocolate working its magic already. A few days of Leckerbissen’s finest sweets and both Clementine and Lady P would be running about the Alps, chasing marmots, milking cows and yodelling at the clouds.
‘Bliss,’ sighed Clementine, tucking the rest of the chocolate leaf into her mouth. ‘I can understand why one might commit a chocolate robbery. These chocolate leaves are better than diamonds and rubies!’
‘Not just one chocolate robbery,’ said Freja. ‘Three! First, there was the robbery at Schokoladen-Fantasie two nights ago. The thief stole a dozen industrial-sized blocks of Margrit Milk chocolate before it had even been made into anything interesting or pretty. Then there was the unsuccessful burglary at Café Schokolade-Schokolade last night. The thief had filled a sack with Margrit Milk chocolate treats, but lost them all in a bungled getaway. And, finally, there was the mugging of Herr Basil the banker this morning, in which three boxes of Margrit Milk chocolate were stolen from under his arm.’
‘Margrit Milk?’ cried Lady P. ‘It’s the pattern of the crime, isn’t it?’
Freja nodded. ‘We know all about patterns, d
on’t we, Mummy Darling Heart? It’s what we looked for when studying the animals in the Arctic wilds.’
Clementine reached out and squeezed Freja’s knee. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Patterns. Connections. Habits. Routines.’
‘The police have been quizzing me about patterns, you know,’ said Lady P. ‘Patterns in Jane’s behaviour. Something that might have hinted at her wicked intentions. Something that might lead us to her true identity and her current whereabouts.’ She snorted. ‘I imagine her whereabouts will soon be a Caribbean island where she will live in luxury on the proceeds of whatever she stole from Lord P’s safety deposit box!’
Tobias leaned forward, tottering on his perch. ‘And the patterns in Jane’s behaviour? What do you recall, Lady P?’
The woman sighed and waved a bandaged hand in the air. ‘I remember so little. This head injury has bruised my poor old brain something dreadful.’
Freja held another chocolate cup to Lady P’s lips and waited patiently while she licked out the soft fluffy mousse.
‘The one thing I do remember,’ said Lady P, ‘is of no use at all . . . But it is a fond memory. Jane loved to read out loud. She was so very clever at using different voices for the characters. Why, she could do old men, little girls, fine ladies, rough sailors, Chinese emperors, American car salesmen.’ She smiled. ‘Sometimes, she even moved about the library, mimicking a character’s posture and walk and facial expressions — the pursing of lips, the wriggling of eyebrows, the way a jaw was clenched in anger. She was very talented. It was wonderfully entertaining — like being at the theatre. We had such fun of an evening. Warm, companionable fun.’ The smile fell from her lips. ‘Which is why it hurt so very much when she pushed me off the mountain. It hurt my body, of course, but it hurt my feelings so much more. The betrayal of someone considered a dear friend is intensely painful.’
The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne Page 13